Being confused by a Metal gears Solid game or any Hideo kojima game for that matter is par for the course, which is why when Metal Gear Solid V was announced with both “The Phantom Pain” and the “Ground Zeroes” subtitles, everyone just sort of shrugged. Uncharacteristically though, Kojima felt the need to clarify the relationship between the two… things.

“‘Ground Zeroes’ is a prologue of MGSV,” according to a Twitlonger post by the Metal Gear creator, “9 years after that event will be “The Phantom Pain”. MGSV is constructed w/ prologue and main game “TPP”. The game play demo I presented today is the opening of “TPP” which is tutorial that starts from crawling.”